A Chinese dual citizen, Chenguang Gong, pleaded guilty to stealing trade secret technology developed for the United States government for nuclear missile launches, tracking missiles, and allowing fighter planes to evade missiles.
Gong pleaded guilty to one count of theft of trade secrets and remains free on a $1.75 million bond, the Justice Department said.
According to his plea agreement, Gong transferred thousands of files from a Los Angeles-area company to personal storage devices. The files included “blueprints for sophisticated infrared sensors designed for use in space-based systems to detect nuclear missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, as well as blueprints for sensors designed to enable U.S. military aircraft to detect incoming heat-seeking missiles and take countermeasures, including by jamming the missiles’ infrared tracking ability,” the DOJ’s release on the matter explained.
The files also contained “proprietary and trade secret information related to the development and design of a readout integrated circuit that allows space-based systems to detect missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles and a readout integrated circuit that allows aircraft to track incoming threats in low visibility environments,” the DOJ added. Gong further transferred files containing trade secrets relating to the creation of sensors allowing the detection of “observable targets while demonstrating increased survivability in space, as well as the blueprints for the mechanical assemblies used to house and cryogenically cool the victim company’s sensors.”
Between 2014 and 2022, Gong submitted applications to “Talent Programs” connected to China. In these applications, the DOJ noted, Gong underscored that the high-performance analog-to-digital converters he proposed to develop in China had military applications, explaining that they ‘directly determine the accuracy and range of radar systems’ and that ‘[m]issile navigation systems also often use radar front-end systems.'”
The development serves as the latest illegal transfer of defense information. In June, a former U.S. Army Sergeant pleaded guilty to attempting to deliver military information to China. Similarly, three U.S. Army soldiers, one former and two current soldiers, were arrested for their involvement in a scheme involving the transmission of national defense information to China and theft of U.S. government property and bribery.
